Crackdown 3 Trailer Reveals An Amazing Feature

Microsoft showed off the first gameplay video for Crackdown 3 at their gamescom 2015 press conference today. Although the footage is from a pre-alpha build of the Xbox One exclusive, it's still seriously impressive.

Crackdown 3, like its predecessor, lets players become elite Agents trying to keep order in a futuristic city. Their targets are the various criminal gangs that control different sections of the metropolis. Players can choose how they dismantle this hierarchy of scumbags.

While Agents are often outnumbered in fighting these criminals, they have several advantages. They have numerous superpowers, including the ability to leap vast distances. In the trailer, we see the green Agility orbs from past games. Grabbing these orbs while navigating the city's rooftops will boost your jumping and climbing ability.

The Agents also have military-grade hardware. They're seen wielding assault rifles and grenades in the trailer. Additionally, they can drive into battle with a "transforming" vehicle.

What I really enjoyed about the trailer, though, was the destructible environments. In the past Crackdown games, players could only blow up barrels and cars. Crackdown 3, however, lets you tear down buildings piece by piece. At one point, we see a skyscraper topple over onto and crush another nearby building.

The trailer's voice over states that the "100%" destructible environments are possible thanks to the Microsoft Cloud, which provides "twenty times the computational power of your Xbox One." It's been awhile since we've heard them tout the power of the cloud. I thought they had actually given up on using that line altogether but I guess not.

The initial E3 trailer for Crackdown 3 showed an Agent driving a truck along the surface of a falling skyscraper and then ramming it into a criminal's penthouse. It's unclear whether that's actually possible in the game. Nonetheless, the level of destruction in the game seems very promising. We haven't seen many games outside of Battlefield and Red Faction make destructibility such an important part of the experience.

Crackdown 3's Gamescom video mentions that this destruction will be available in a "revolutionary new multiplayer." Xbox Wire mentions that the game's online offering will include a co-op mode. Furthermore, there's going to be a multiplayer beta sometime next year.